Summary: South Korean and U.S. troops raised their alert to the highest level since 2006 after North Korea renounced its truce with the allied forces and threatened to strike any ships trying to intercept its vessels. The move was a sign of heightened tensions on the peninsula following the North’s underground nuclear test and its firing of a series of short-range missiles earlier in the week.

Summary: Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, says the Pentagon is prepared to leave fighting forces in Iraq for as long as a decade despite an agreement between the United States and Iraq that would bring all American troops home by 2012.

Summary: Memorial Day tribute to the men and women of America’s fighting forces — both the living and the dead — and in particular those who gave their last full measure of devotion. … “The Blessings and Burdens of Liberty,” keynote address delivered by Lt. Col. James C. Fischer at the Memorial Day commemoration, St. Cloud VA Medical Center, May 25, 2009.

Summary: Speculation about the potential entry of Tarryl Clark, assistant majority leader in the Minnesota senate, into the race for the Democratic endorsement to run against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) in the 2010 general election for U.S. House of Representatives in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District.

Summary: A Katyusha rocket blasted Baghdad’s fortified government and military Green Zone compound overnight, killing a civilian working for the U.S. Department of Defense. … Tribute to service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Summary: When former Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech on national security delivered May 21, 2009, lambasted the change in security policy under President Barack Obama, he was not attacking the Obama administration so much as the Bush administration itself — considering he was essentially repeating many of the same arguments he had made unsuccessfully within the Bush White House as policy decisions increasingly went the other way in President Bush’s second term.